Rating:

“Lay waste to yourself all you like, I will grown in your ruin.”

Author: Sarah Maria Griffin

There is nothing more attractive to a horror-hound/B-movie monster lover than the idea of a sentient, carnivorous plant. It evokes the lovably laughable Little Shop of Horrors while still hitting all the right tones of horror. After all, what is more terrifying than being secretly observed and puppeted by something that should be so ordinary, so innocuous?

And that, dear reader, was the siren call that led me to this book. Well, that and the gorgeous cover. What it promises (feed me Seymour!) is not, however, what it delivers.

The story focuses on a down-on-her-luck woman, Shell, who has just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved back in with her parents. She has hit rock bottom and is indulging in all kinds of self-pity. That’s when she sees a “help wanted” sign at a florists in a creepy, falling apart mall. From here, Shell discovers that she has a talent with plants, especially in putting together the perfect bouquet and making the sleepy little shop that hired her big news on the ‘Gram.

Shell has also discovered that Neve, the lonely shopkeeper, is her kind of woman. She senses that this could be the perfect romance, but she is also torn between her attraction to the seemingly perfect Neve and one of Neve’s friends (a dude whose name I cannot remember and refuse to look up.)

You’re probably asking – as you well should – where the hell the plant carnage is in all this love-triangle/Instagram worship. Baby, the plant, is mostly observing from the side-lines, telling us everything our self-centered, rather dull characters are thinking, watching the “relationships” bloom or fade. Plants eating people, the glorious idea we came for, is not that important to the plot, and you don’t get any real carnage until the last 20 percent of the book. Boooo!

Image by Judas from Pixabay

In the meantime, Neve and her friends sit around a lot, worrying about the mall being shut down (because really, this mall is A DUMP). Shell goes back and forth on whether she wants Neve or dude-who’s-name-I-forgot. She flip-flops on the issue, indulging herself in being wanted. Honestly, who cares? Shell is not worth it. Neve is secretive, and her motives are rarely touched on. The dude is ok, but we came to see plants murdering people and instead we get a lot of conversations about how people have changed since middle-school and how pretty Instagram pictures of flowers are. Yawn.

With all this relationship triangulation, you’d think at least we’d get some characterization, but we really don’t. Why Baby is so obsessed with Neve remains a mystery. What does our little murder plant see in this dull woman? When real orchid flowers start to sprout from people’s skin, everyone is very non-plussed. Apparently deciding who to date is way more important than random inexplicable body modifications. Go to the hospital? Nah. Much better to worry about potential relationships.

Finally, at the end, we get a bit of Baby action, but it seems peripheral. Baby’s and Neve’s backstory happens very quickly, very mechanically. Neve’s motivations are never clear. Why is she supporting murder plant? Why this connection, especially after what murder plant does? No one knows. And why is Neve’s ex-girlfriend suddenly in the narrative, propelling things when she was a total non-entity before? If only more time had been spent setting up these important and gory catalysts, instead of bemoaning a decrepit mall and highlighting the world’s most boring love-triangle, Eat The Ones You Love could have been good or at least entertaining.

In the end, the few moments of plant-eating human action and Baby’s occasional creepiness just wasn’t enough to redeem a tale that was shockingly dull and monotonous. Great idea, poor execution and focus.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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